By Heck, I thought he was low balling this statistic:
The U.S. ambassador to the Philippines has apologized for saying that 40 percent of male tourists visit the country for sex.
Ambassador Harry Thomas sent a cellphone text message Friday to Philippine Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario, who was on a visit to Vietnam, expressing regret for his comments, foreign affairs spokesman Raul Hernandez said.
“I should not have used the 40 percent statistic without the ability to back it up. I regret any harm that I may have caused,” the Daily Mail quoted Thomas as saying in the text message, which Hernandez forwarded to journalists.
U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Tina Malone said Saturday that Thomas ‘offered his deep regret’ for his comment.
She said the United States would continue to be a ‘strong and dedicated partner of the Filipino people in combating the global scourges of human trafficking and sexual tourism.’
Thomas’ remark last month angered some officials who questioned its basis and said it tarnished the country’s image. [Korea Times]
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6:40 pm on October 11th, 2011 1
Hmm I’d say 70~80% of the males going to AC are for sex.
But there are plenty of tourists going for scuba diving / touristy stuff.
8:27 pm on October 11th, 2011 2
He apologized via text message? What, is he going native?
Here’s a copy of the SMS:
sry bout w@ I z. I wz bn a idiot.
plz 4give me. hit me bac. LOL
8:49 pm on October 11th, 2011 3
Angeles city? Try 100% of the males and why would a female go to Angeles? Oh yeah — 100% of them also.
I, of course, go to Angeles for the Red Horse, and VFW.
9:01 pm on October 11th, 2011 4
Second SMS message to Albert del Rosario from the good ambassador.
My ph nEdz a load. DY av a 100p? My mom S Ill n d province. Let’s mEt l8r n Makati. IK a bar whr der r sum real spinners. sry bout callN ll yr gals whores. LOL
9:14 pm on October 11th, 2011 5
9:58 pm on October 11th, 2011 6
Leon,
I don’t know which is more funked up…
…that you wrote it… or that it is completely understandable both linguistically and culturally.
I think you could make some serious money chatting with dumbazz contractors… as they always seem to be sending extra cash to their o-line “girlfriends” to cover operations for Sick Mothers and monthly payments for her Education.
11:10 pm on October 11th, 2011 7
6. What did you think I did for a living?
3:26 am on October 12th, 2011 8
I can see you administrating a network.
“LaPorte! The secure network is down! What happened?”
“No load. I’ll try to get it up again. Can you call the VFW and see if the retirees have any change in pesos we can get to keep the network running?”
3:37 am on October 12th, 2011 9
She said the United States would continue to be a ‘strong and dedicated partner of the Filipino people in combating the global scourges of human trafficking and sexual tourism.’
Dude.. this is like 34% of the PI’s GDP. Who says they want to combat it?
5:00 am on October 12th, 2011 10
I don’t know anything about the Philippines or what the status is over there with sex workers. But by reading the comments here, it certainly looks like you guys are very experienced with the sex for hire of the locals to be experts.
7:54 am on October 12th, 2011 11
Tom,
You don’t have to be an expert.
All you have to do in the Philippines is show up.
Just by walking in Robinson’s, if you are under 25, everything is free. If you are under 30 and dressed nicely, everything is free. If you are under 35 and say you are just waiting for the right woman to marry, everything is free. If you are under 40 and say you came to the Philippines to find a wife, everything is free. If you are under 100 and you look like you have two coins to rub together, someone will approach you and ask if you want to meet their cousin who is a really nice girl but she needs some money for her education. Actually, you can probably be over 100.
In the end, it doesn’t matter if you go to the Philippines as a sex tourist or as a delegate to an Amish values convention, the offer of sweet, sweet sex with a slinky teenage girl will come to you at a very affordable price… and follow you around trying to sell you on it even if you say no, no, no, and no.
But, as always, if you have heard of a place, it means its time is passing. The places not commonly known are always better.
Indonesia is better.
8:08 am on October 12th, 2011 12
I know a guy in Korea who is retired military and working as a contractor. Due to investing every penny he has ever made from early on AND never getting married – he is a millionaire. Even though he doesn’t need to – he has continued on as a contractor though. 3-4 years ago, he went down to the PI to buy a retirement home. Another guy here in Korea who is married to a Filapina got his sister-in-law, who is a real estate agent in the PI, to help this guy find a house.
The guy came back all happy about finding this great house. But he also married that real estate agent on his next trip. She has always stayed there in the PI and he just keeps on working here in Korea.
I just couldn’t help but scratch my head…the guy is in his mid to late 50s – has got a million+ in the bank – and he goes and does that.
8:28 am on October 12th, 2011 13
‘has got a million+ in the bank’
That isn’t worth a damn for a guy his age in Korea. Usually (not always, but usually) Korean men marry Filipino women because they cannot attract Korean women… a bit sad, actually.
8:30 am on October 12th, 2011 14
The guy I’m talking about is a caucasian American.
9:25 am on October 12th, 2011 15
I see. I’m as puzzled as you why he didn’t go for those creamy white Korean women instead. Afraid of them becoming silly ajummas?
1:33 pm on October 12th, 2011 16
I’ve seen Korean women in America when they get angry. Not pretty! I havn’t seen a Flip angry — yet.
Indonesia? Humm—
1:37 am on October 13th, 2011 17
@12,
Most likely to secure the ownership of the house. PI has some really weird laws about land and business ownership by foreign nationals who don’t have Filipino spouses.
It’s my understanding, although I could be wrong, that you can’t outright own property and instead have to lease it. I believe this is one of those old laws enacted when PI was going all nationalistic, to prevent them damn furreners from “controlling” their country. Only people I’ve ever known to “own” land in PI were married to PI women.
Actually thinking about it, assuming they came to some sort of arrangement, it makes sense. On paper their “married” and he provides her and her family money each month. In actuality he gets to whore it up and do whatever he wants without having to worry about a “wife” messing with this life. He not only gets to have his cake, he gets the entire bakery.
5:11 am on October 13th, 2011 18
Someotherguy,
If house ownership is his reason for marriage, he is doin’ it wrong.
There are a number of ways to “own” (control) property in the Philippines without having to be exposed to the risk of a paper marriage… or the monthly expense that may include.
1. Don’t buy the land, just make a lease for the rest of your life. Terms can include a (relatively small) lump sum of cash, a small monthly payment, or building a house that will revert to the landowner when the lease is up… whatever it takes to get that nice beachfront property under your control for the rest of your life.
2. Form a corporation with the obligatory local partners… but protect your interests with enforceable civil contracts on the back-end. The partners always get greedy after a few years if this is done for business purposes… so get some real peasants for partners so you are the only one who can afford a lawyer when they start listening to their spoiler friends and relatives trying to convince them it would be better to sabotage the whole deal than just be happy with a hundred bucks a year or whatever you pay them to not be in the way.
3. Put it into a Filipino’s name… once again with a civil contract that protects your control and all the cautions of forming a corporation.
4. Pay somebody off and just buy the property with a legal exception.
5. Get married and have all the potential obligations that comes with in a country that doesn’t allow divorce… and whatever obligations might come about from your home country. You can change business partners easier than you can change wives. Marriage sounds like the worst option.
There are some trustworthy lawyers in the Philippines who have lots of experience helping foreigners do business, arrange retirement, and invest in local projects… just don’t do business with anybody who is a bigger fish than you… or you might find yourself on the short end of the stick.
7:00 am on October 13th, 2011 19
#18
good point, but if you marry them outside of the philippines i don’t believe the divorce restrictions apply. also, in my mind, if you are going to get married, it would be hard to find a better woman than a good filipina. i suppose i am a bit biased, though, and most admittedly luckier than some guys who marry filipinas.
11:36 pm on October 13th, 2011 20
@18,
Contracts in PI mean less then they do in SK. Whomever has more money / connections always wins, always. How do you think the rich and powerful family’s stayed rich and powerful.
All that legal paperwork / civil contracts would have absolutely no meaning if someone wanted to screw you over. They would just have to use your money, or the promise of your money to pay off the appropriate authorities and your complaint will never make it past the local level. The only way around this is to have even higher connections then the person trying to screw you over, but then this particular individual has nearly no connections inside PI otherwise he wouldn’t of needed to resort to the marriage method.
Leasing it is exactly what the PI government wants you to do. They don’t care what you while your there, they just want the land to come back to a PI citizen when your dead or when you leave. They also don’t want you to have any legal claim to the land, makes taking it away much easier.
I ran this by a good friend of mine who happens to own three homes in PI, and it’s pretty common for foreigners to marry a PI girl if for no other reason then to buy a cheap home for retirement. When they die all their assets belong to their PI wife, but that’s only assets kept inside PI, anything outside like funds and US bank accounts would go too whomever he stated in his will. He’s protected from the wife backstabbing him because she’s a small fish and he provides her with more monthly money then she would get from the house. It wouldn’t be in her best interest to screw him over and bite the hand that’s feeding her. If there’s anything PI women are good at, its ensuring they have a stable monetary income from a foreigner.
1:18 am on October 14th, 2011 21
someotherguy,
“All that legal paperwork / civil contracts would have absolutely no meaning if someone wanted to screw you over.”
Uh… it seems I specifically warned not to get involved with any fish that are bigger than you are… and to use the services of a trustworthy and connected lawyer who IS a big fish in case you want to do serious business.
The chances are low of somebody trying to sit on you over a lease of some peasant-owned land in the provinces or some open air bamboo bar in some ratty tourist area.
“Leasing it is exactly what the PI government wants you to do.”
Hmmm… just because that’s what the government “wants” you to do, to understandably keep rich foreigners from owning everything, doesn’t make it a bad option.
It doesn’t matter if you “lose” the small amount of money it takes to lease land and build a house after you die… or, by paper marriage, loose it to a fake wife. It’s still gone.
If you want to get out of the lease and “sell” your house/business, simply include a clause that allows you to transfer the lease. Find someone else who would like a nice house with a lifetime lease at a reasonable price.
In my opinion, it is a much better option than the entanglements of fake marriage.
“He’s protected from the wife backstabbing him because she’s a small fish and he provides her with more monthly money then she would get from the house.”
So… why even get married? Just make the same arrangement with some dude that lives 10 islands over and can’t even afford banka fare to come see the land you are leasing under his name.
WTF is up with all these people who will make excuses to marry some random skank just to buy a house… especially when it is not necessary.
People have some seriously screwy priorities.
This is not to say that a Filipina wouldn’t make a great wife… but it has got to be the Right Filipina… and there are far too many people marrying the Convenient Filipina.
That’s good when they are young and still want to hit the bars… but there are a lot of lonely old men in the Philippines… and there are a lot of guys who can’t marry the girl they want to marry because of short-term thinking in the past.
Another reason for hasty marriages is the sweet visa that comes with it…
…but that doesn’t really require a marriage either as everything is possible in the Philippines.
someotherguy, it seems I was getting a lecture of some sort but damned if I can see the point.
11:05 pm on October 14th, 2011 22
Sex and Americans!!
US television must not even show tits, a sick US bible morale,
US men in Asia is just a steam valve for US hypocrisy
Sex is beautiful and natural,
don’t let man made morale dictate your sex life
12:46 am on October 15th, 2011 23
#22
you know what dictates a married man’s sex life?
headaches, cramps, menstruation, and “i’m just not in the mood….”
2:19 am on October 15th, 2011 24
My MORALE is good. It’s just that my MORALS aren’t so good.
8:15 am on October 15th, 2011 25
But my MORALE does dictate my sex life.
Or is it the other way around. 